


Pulse Point

by Aithilin



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Death, M/M, tattooed Victor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-15
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 21:53:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1618355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aithilin/pseuds/Aithilin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victor wasn't in London when Sherlock jumped off a building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Victor hated leaving things unfinished. He had delayed trips to England in order to complete business, close deals, and finish up his language courses. When he first took over the plantation, his need to see things through meant years away from the familiarity of London and Norfolk. It meant extended correspondence with lawyers and realtors and potential partners— where most business was pushed through email and too-late phone calls.

After about two years of pushing things through to a specific end, he designed and stuck to a schedule. Deadlines were better enforced. Meetings were confirmed well in advance. And when he had developed his reputation as a reliable, fair business owner, he commanded enough respect to enforce his idea of schedules onto those who wished to do business with him.

It helped that most of the men from his father’s generation seemed content to underestimate him at every turn. He had worked hard to prove that he wasn’t his father; and in the end they respected him once he had laid out his cunning and sense.

Of course most of the old, wealthy, white men who posed as buyers for his tea were afraid of young men with tattoos who could speak four languages and were confident enough to stare then down when they suggested cutting workers’ pay. That helped quite a bit.

Victor liked to think his tenacity was a good trait. Even if it meant he didn’t get to see Sherlock as often as he liked.

When he got the news of the suicide, he threw himself into the work again. There were deadlines, and people who counted on him. People who needed him, who had to talk to him, expected him to be there.

He wondered if Sherlock had expected him to be there.

When work was seen to, he didn’t know what to do with those errant thoughts. They would eat away at him, edge him out of sleep, take over his mind until he was looking up the reports and news in the middle of the night. In the early morning, when he knew Lestrade was finally off work, he would call, ask for details, beg for last words or tidbits of information that could give him a reason. He begged Lestrade for understanding.

He couldn’t call Mycroft. They had never been close, and he didn’t want the impersonal reports again. He wanted to know if his husband had died for a reason.

The day of the funeral, he was in the city, at his artists’ getting the line of bees up his left arm that had been planned weeks ago as a surprise for Sherlock. Sherlock had loved to kiss his way up from the ring Victor wore (“really? It’s a sentimental tradition that has no bearing except as a display of ownership, Victor.”), following the veins— sometimes naming then— and settling over his chest (“I want to measure your heart rate, Victor. It’s the best indication of your real reactions.”). He knew that Sherlock would scoff at the line of little bees creeping up his arm, but then shower them with reverent kisses— as he did with every new tattoo.

Or he would have.

As his artist worked, Victor let the buzz of machinery and familiar pain calm him. He could let it take his mind away from his grief— the fact that there was no goodbye. He wondered, as he sat in a tattoo parlour on the otherside of the world, who would speak at the funeral that would be starting soon. Would Lestrade stand for Sherlock as he had at the wedding? Would there be kind words? Or would it be a quick affair with nothing said?

He wondered if anyone got a goodbye.

A week later, he paid extra to quickly add a stylized “W. S. S. H.” over his pulse point.

When it healed, he would press his lips to it, and wish it was his lover’s heartbeat he felt.

He didn’t go back to London.


	2. Chapter 2

Every year there was a new commemoration. A raven on his shoulder; tail travelling down his left arm to welcome the bees into the dark, beak peeking above collars as a constant reminder of his grief, wings stretched out to mirror his chest and back— feathers just skirting the hive over his heart in front and covering a huge expanse of his skin. It took six trips to his artist to complete to his liking. He called it Memory.

For the second anniversary, he got the ring tattooed. The real one he locked up safe with photos and letters, printed emails and collected journals Sherlock’s work was published in. He kept them all together in his bedroom— always within easy reach should he want to remember. But it felt odd to look at his hand and not see the ring, so he made a new one. The delicate, tiny shapes of honeycomb wrapped around his finger to tie into the bees travelling up his arm.

He hadn’t thought about how much that one could hurt.

He was taking a quiet moment to plan the third anniversary— well aware that he was starting to override his body with his grief, but it was a familiar feeling. It was safe and comforting, and he was so far removed from Sherlock’s life that he didn’t know what else to do. He hadn’t met the friend Sherlock spoke of in his last letter, he only knew that Lestrade would have been there.

It felt wrong to consider stepping foot in London now. As if he would intrude on the grief of others. He doubted Sherlock ever mentioned him.

He still wished that he got a goodbye. It had eaten away at him since.

He devoted time to the idea of adopting a child. Doing some good and giving someone hope where he had lost his. But it quickly became an idea for “when he was better”. As if he could be.

But it was during a quiet moment near lunch when his doorbell rang. This time had been slotted into his schedule— carefully constructed to be a private recharge before he faced the crest of the day.

But he forced his grief aside, and went to investigate.

The man was exhausted. He looked like he had crawled through hell— gaunt, bruised, a clear infection spreading through whatever wounds were half hidden. The man needed a hospital. He needed help.

Victor nearly collapsed at the sight of him, leaning against the doorframe, obscured from the street, hunched forward and dead on his feet.

"Will?"

He would take the hallucination. It was better than nothing.

The spectre on his doorstep looked up at him with startling clear eyes. The same quicksilver eyes he knew. And he reached out to the ghost. “My god, Will? How?”


	3. Chapter 3

They had a few days before Mycroft caught up to Sherlock. Days spent with Victor doing his best to patch up the injuries, unnerved by the quiet looks of pain and desperation he received. The first words out of Sherlock’s mouth, hoarse and pained, were:

"Has anyone else been here? Have you seen anyone you don’t know around? Have you been watched?"

When the panic subsided, when Sherlock was cleaned up and rested, Victor pulled him close.

They spent hours curled on the bed together. Victor cleared his schedule, and passed off responsibilities. He just wanted to hold Sherlock close. So he did; breathed in the familiar scent of him and cried quietly in relief into the too-long hair. They lay in silence, clung to each other like they thought the other was a spirit about to fade.

He spent hours telling Sherlock nonsense, just to soothe him. He spoke of selling the Norfolk estate and his father’s holdings. He spoke of putting the money into the plantation and set aside for possible plans. He spoke of open fields damaged by storms, and a mercenary hunting alleged man-eaters a handful of miles away. He spoke of visits from buyers and business that would have bored Sherlock to death a few years ago.

He spoke until his voice was hoarse and his throat pained, and he saved the silence by kissing his lover to sleep.

He woke some time in the small hours of the morning to a hand tracing shapes on his chest. It took a moment to realize that Sherlock was there, alive and mostly whole, and unfamiliar with the new tattoos.

"A giant raven?" Sherlock’s fingertips traced the edge of the feathers. "You’re so dramatic, Victor."

He couldn’t help it, it was ridiculous and so _Sherlock_ that Victor had to laugh. Mindful of the injuries (he would trace them with soft kisses and softer hands later) he pulled Sherlock in for a kiss.

It took another few hours to show Sherlock the other new designs inked into his skin (mouth and hands mapping out the expanse of the bird, soft fleeting presses of lips over the trail of bees, a curious look to the initials and ring). It took another few hours to be firmly grounded in the truth— that Sherlock was alive and here with him.

They had a few days of Victor carefully cleaning wounds and bandaging Sherlock up. Of drawing out the story of what had happened. Letting Sherlock check windows and doors, his back to corners when he sat, fearful of assistants come to talk in the few moments Victor allowed them in the parlour or office.

By the time Mycroft arrived to collect his brother, Sherlock was doing better. Hair pulled back, wearing Victor’s clothes. There was still so much wrong and still so much pain, but they knew the importance of Sherlock’s proper return— the public one, the attempt to resume his life.

Before Mycroft took Sherlock away, Victor did something he had never expected to do again— he kissed his husband.

"Call me when the case is over, Will. I’ll be on the next flight in."


End file.
